What does it mean to us? Well, quite a lot in the West Midlands specifically! Apparently the lack of higher skills in the West Midlands costs us approximately £10 Billion in lost productivity! This is part of a stark set of statistics delivered to us by AWM in a short presentation last week.So this represents a real challenge if we will ever meet government targets and fulfil the Leitch agenda. In the meantime HEFCE have been holding consultation events across the UK to move the new Universities programme to the next phase.A new set of colour coded maps indicate areas of possible HE candidates :

To help SMT understand and implement the HE strategy, HEFCE and its leadership foundation are running a set of 4 UK workshops (spring 2009) for College principals and invited staff. This is hot off HEFCE approval board this week. Email project administrator Karen Kitchen: K.kitchen@sheffield.ac.uk